Construction on the first phase of the Taylor Independent School District bond is expected to begin this summer and finish in time for the start of the 2023-24 school year, officials said.
At the Nov. 14 regular Taylor ISD board meeting, trustees heard an update about the first phase of construction on an $82.5 million bond package that was recently approved by voters for security updates, campus growth and other upgrades.
Phase 1 will include new fencing and secure entrances at Naomi Pasemann Elementary School and Taylor High School, a new playground and interior upgrades at Main Street Intermediate School and other interior renovations at T.H. Johnson Elementary School, according to a presentation by the bond’s Project Manager Aaron Mullins, with Project Control.
“These are the items that you all approved and have released to the design team to begin working on,” Mullins said.
Mullins said that the schematic design for the first phase had been completed, and that he is currently working with Stantec, which is in the middle of compiling construction documents, and Drymalla Construction, which is working on pricing the designs to give preliminary budgets for the projects.
“This will give us a gut check of where we thought we would be by now,” Mullins said.
According to a timeline Mullins presented to the board, the spring of 2023 will be devoted to materials procurement, and the summer of 2023 to construction.
Mullins told trustees he anticipates no problems with the first phase of the project getting done on time.
“So, that was some of the first bit of work that we did with Drymalla and Stantec; we kind of went around and around on what can we select that we feel we can actually complete in that amount of time, and that’s kind of how we compiled this list of projects,” Mullins said. “There were certain things that we had talked about, maybe adding something in. I know Dr. Padavil had voiced some opinions about some things that he would have loved to have gotten done this summer, and they were not doable.”
However, there could be a few issues with materials, he said. “There are a couple of items that we are still working through, access control on the secured entries, so card swipes and things like that, those are kind of the one item that we have tagged that may be an issue trying to get them in time,” Mullins said. “There is a microchip shortage, anything electronic is just difficult, so we will be running that down as soon as possible.”
One factor that went into the decision of which projects to include and which to shelve for the moment had to do with availability of materials, Mullins said.
“As you all know, the market is a little crazy right now, so those are all things we can talk about during the design, trying to make a selection of materials that we know are readily available and we can get by the start of the summer so we can start construction this summer and finish before the start of the school year,” Mullins said.
So right now, we have finished schematic designs Santec is in the middle of compiling the construction documents at Drymalla is working on pricing the schematic design plans just to give us some preliminary budgets
